Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday November 29, 2011 @06:58PM
from the what-on-earth dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A federal judge has ruled that a number of a websites trafficking in counterfeit Chanel goods can have their domains seized and transferred to a new registrar. Astonishingly, the judge also ordered that the sites must be de-indexed from all search engines and all social media websites. Quoting the article: 'Missing from the ruling is any discussion of the Internet's global nature; the judge shows no awareness that the domains in question might not even be registered in this country, for instance, and his ban on search engine and social media indexing apparently extends to the entire world. (And, when applied to U.S.-based companies like Twitter, apparently compels them to censor the links globally rather than only when accessed by people in the U.S.) Indeed, a cursory search through the list of offending domains turns up poshmoda.ws, a site registered in Germany. The German registrar has not yet complied with the U.S. court order, though most other domain names on the list are .com or .net names and have been seized.'"

There is also European StartPage / Ixquick [startpage.com], but it's more for privacy. It aggregates results from Google and other search engines, so US censors still apply. Yandex and Baidu are completely independant search engines.

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If by "yell fire in a crowded theater" you mean "argue against conscription for a brutal and pointless war in which millions died, an obviously political form of speech" - which is what the case that phrase came from was about - then I think you'll find a lot of people do. Strange that.

The largest irony is in people saying how Google or US doesn't censor search results, but like this court order and the various "x number of search results have been removed from the page after complaints from copyright owners" text in search results. Different issues, but just as much censoring.

There is definitely less -- and less harmful -- censorship in Google's results. Chinese search engines block results by words and phrases (what kind of results do you think you'd get for "Tiananmen Square"?). Google blocks results by URL (which is easier to change without changing the message).

Less harmful is defined by your culture and population. Remember that most Chinese believe that it's for the country's good that government tries to keep some control. You probably wouldn't want your home, place of work and everything you've worked for your whole life pillaged by rioters. Just think about it from the eyes of Chinese.

On the other hand, what China censors on their search engine (ie., riots, Tienanmen square, etc to keep peace) is much less harmful than what US does with some mere cheap good

There is no such thing as "less harmful" where censorship is concerned. We know for the experience every society has had with it going back to the start of the written word, that once you start censoring it never stops. Today its websites that might be violating copyright, tomorrow its anything a senator does not like said about him, the day after its whatever some corporation does not want you be able to publish.

All public censorship is harmful, and it should always be opposed vehemently.

I will stand up an say it: no type of content should be illegal to distribute or possess. Sorry, I know it really hurts the "think of the children" and "oh my God terrorists will know how to make nukes" crowds, but we are supposed to be the country where people are free, inclusive of being free from censorship. Once we get into the business of prosecuting people because of files on their hard drives, documents on their bookshelves, or thoughts in their minds, we cease to be a free society (so I guess we are not a free society).

My view on the child pornography issue is this: the danger lies with people who abuse children. Possessing child pornography does not prove that one is a child abuser, nor does fantasizing about child abuse. In the computer age, where data is rapidly copied between systems, distributing anything indicates nothing at all.

We live in an age of rapid, global communication -- the old economic arguments about possession fueling production simply do not apply anymore. The fact that most people find child pornography to be disgusting is no reason to make it illegal to possess. New technologies necessitate a new approach to prosecuting child molesters, and we need to make sure that we are actually prosecuting child molesters and not just picking up low-threat people who have some child porn on their hard drives (which in all likelihood was downloaded without any transaction or trade).

Let's just keep it at illegal to produce. Open them and their entire families to civil lawsuits with crushing fines by any and all victims (and/or families thereof). Execute them if you feel the need.

However, any law that restricts possession or broadcast of *any* data, no matter how revolting or dangerous it may be, should be avoided at all costs. The only exception I can think of involves governmental secrets, but only because those who share them voluntarily obligated themselves before accessing that dat

We know for the experience every society has had with it going back to the start of the written word, that once you start censoring it never stops.

Patently false. We should continue to be vigilant, but your position suggests that there was leas censorship in the fifties than there is now. Obviously that isn't true. The truth is there has always been censorship and most likely always will be. The question we needare to continyou ask istoday when is it appropriate to for the larger good. Right now scientist

your position suggests that there was leas censorship in the fifties than there is now. Obviously that isn't true

Is that obvious? True, pornography and communist literature has been legalize, but we have since made the following things illegal or have otherwise engaged in censorship:

Child pornography (for a short period of time after pornography was legalized, it was not illegal to possess child pornography; moral arguments aside, we do censor this now, and to a much greater degree than pornography in general was censored in an earlier era)

Information on drug production (TiHKAL an PiHKAL cost Alexander Shulgin his research license)

Laws (yes, really, there are laws that you are not allowed to know about)

...and that only represents the list of things that immediately come to my mind. While there was quite a bit of censorship in the 1950s, I would say that we are either at the same level today, or even slightly beyond that level.

Child porn has been censored in the US for decades. Has it led to political censorship yet? Nope. Again, you're insane. Paranoid, specifically.

If you think there isn't political censorship in the US then you aren't paying much attention. Of course I don't believe that banning child porn has lead to our political censorship. In fact we, in the US, have always banned some content by law, but we're much less restrictive than we used to be. So the long term trend has actually been to increase the types of expression that are legal. So the slippery slope theory doesn't fit with the available data.

On the off chance that you're not trolling in a phenomenally stupid manner: Take your cultural relativism and your totalitarian apologetics and shove them where the sun doesn't shine.

My "less harmful" was meant primarily in the sense that a posteriori censorship of known content is more specific (less likely to result in an unintended match) than a priori censorship based on keywords or similar patterns. But if you want to look at it from a moral perspective, then yes, Google's censorship of sites selling

Remember that most Chinese believe that it's for the country's good that government tries to keep some control.

I'm Chinese and I despise sinophile apologist fucks like you. You have no right to speak for anyone.

I'm also Chinese and I have to say GP is unfortunately correct. Poll after poll of people actually living in Communist China shows the vast, vast majority think that the government should play a role in "protecting the people from dangerous ideas" and the like. They're fools, and they're wrong, but they're out there, just like the lunatic Fox News fringe exists here in the US (which unfortunately makes up a large enough voting bloc to win a majority of Congress in 2010).

You can be as indignant as you want, but don't ignore reality just because it disgusts you; that's kind of what those other people that you'd rather ignore are doing.

By GP's logic then I could make the argument that the particular kind of censorship in the US that is being critiqued in this thread is also a cultural phenomenon above all else, and that it should be best approached from that perspective of non-judgmental understanding of "US culture" despite anyone's objection that the "culture" is a result of brainwashing, and that the torrent of +5 Insightful morally indignant posts we see in this thread being directed at the US is in fact a manifestation of their ignorance of US culture.

Judge works for government. A judge ruling that domains should be taken down (especially so with other countries TLD's!) and search results censored from the search results is a government-sanctioned filtering.

Just because you think "oh well, at least we can still say (almost) anything (almost) anywhere", doesn't make it any less censoring.

A judge ruling in favor of a company seeking to protect their trademarks is not government censorship.

That depends entirely on how the judge implements enforcement of his ruling.

A judge ruling that search engines must de-index sites offering counterfeit wares is stupid and practically unenforceable, but not censorship.

I disagree.

The search engines are publishing the existence of the counterfeit wares sites upon the request of the people using the search engines. The judge is telling the SEs that they are not allowed to report facts (that is, the existence and location of those sites).

This is censorship any way you slice it, even if you agree with the motivation of the judge.

What makes your examples not-censorship? At the core, common definitions of censorship [pbs.org] agree that it is the restriction of speech (communications). When (if) you avoid using "Fsck" in polite conversation, you're censoring yourself.

People keep using these words but do not seem to understand what they mean.

A judge ruling in favor of a company seeking to protect their trademarks is not government censorship.

A judge ruling that search engines must de-index sites offering counterfeit wares is stupid and practically unenforceable, but not censorship.

From Mirriam-Webster
Judge: a public official authorized to decide questions brought before a court
Censor: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
Law: a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority

If the judge isn't applying the rules made by the government then whose rules are they? Seems pretty clear cut to me.

A judge ruling in favor of a company seeking to protect their trademarks is not government censorship.

Since when does "government" have anything to do with it?

to suppress or delete as objectionable Merriam-Webster [merriam-webster.com]

This is textbook suppression. It doesn't matter who does it, or even the particular mechanism, but if the delisting from all (or even just some) web search engines doesn't qualify as an attempt to suppress, I don't know what does.

You're reading the courts too broadly. They're saying that sites that traffic counterfit goods can be sued out of search engines. That's a fairly big difference. Pepsi can't sue Coke to get them out of search results.

They're saying that sites that traffic counterfit goods can be sued out of search engines. That's a fairly big difference. Pepsi can't sue Coke to get them out of search results.

As usual, people aren't thinking the security through. If we are going to create a new mechanism whereby judges have the capacity to censor out counterfeit traffickers, then all this work that we're going to do to, will also create a mechanism for censoring out Coke. You can say that would be an illegal use of the mechanism, but

In all likelihood, the judge just signed off on a proposed injunction order drafted by the plaintiffs (the trademark holders). I'm assuming the defendants (the trademark infringers) didn't appear, thus allowing the court to enter an injunction against them by default. Usually, the courts have the winning side draft the terms of the proposed injunction, and the judge reviews and modifies it as necessary. Here, the "deleting" the websites from "all search engines" was probably some stupid language the plaintiff put in and the judge either didn't notice it or didn't think about how stupid that language is. Ultimately, it doesn't matter-- the injunction binds only those people who are parties to the case (the trademark infringers) or who work in "active concert" with them -- something that no court would deem a search engine to be.

FTFY; what is at issue here is not whether or not you are free to produce "counterfeit" goods (which are probably being made by the same people who produce "genuine" goods), but whether or not you are free to run a mail-order business that sells those goods.

That's irrelevant to the general problem. Yes, they are counterfeit goods in this case, but this country LOVES precedent. But where does it stop? Can I bring down a website because it is opposite to the views of Congress? If this is going to be continued, there needs to be strict legal guidelines to prevent abuse of power from ANY power. This is what is worrisome.

No, actually it's very relevant. For everyone making a fuss about the judge's ignorance, idiocy, etc., I'd really like to hear how you'd address the problem. (Yes, it is a problem. It's the same principle as demanding that any kind of license, be it GPL or BSD, be adhered to, or Richard Stallman insisting that people should say GNU/Linux.)

Put a bit more simplistically - we have an age-old problem (fakes, cheapening of a brand, etc.) which is now complicated by technological advances. What's the best solutio

It is illegal to engage in trademark infringement. It is illegal to sell goods known to be infringing. Goods engaging in trademark infringement can be seized, and often are without the merchant being compensated.

It is not illegal however to publish a directory of where one can find infringing goods. That's the analogy to the listing.

Historically, the US attitude towards knockoffs has been to embrace them with open arms.

In the song Yankee Doodle, Macaroni does not refer to pasta, but to an expensive Italian hat with a signature feather on it. Hence the line "...stuck a feather in his hat and called it Macaroni"

It's interesting to watch a societies laws change as the country goes from a nation that thrives on innovation and change to one vested in the status quo that any change, no matter how much good it will be done in the long term faces huge opposition For example copyright has gone from 16 years for books and maps (newspapers, magazines, posters, paintings, fliers, and prints had no copyright protection.) to 75 plus life of the author for anything with slightest amount of creativity involved in its making.

US companies, of course. Frankly, people who travel overseas will buy them at will, fully knowing they are cheap replicas. And usually they also get a good product, only without the huge profit margin to company that made it.

Protect consumer from what? What is so dangerous in a cheap counterfeit Coco Channel purse or a Rolex replica?

OK, a serious answer, there are dangerous goods that can cause harm. Poorly made products that can be explosive, combustible, toxic or otherwise harmful. But despite the cries to the contrary, most counterfeit goods do not fall into this catagory. Most products that fit into this catagory are filtered out using existing import laws designed to prevent the importation of goods that are explosive, combustible, toxic or otherwise harmful (think of the Chinese milk that was combined with melamine).

A Rolex replica doesn't perform like a Rolex under real conditions. For example Rolex has fantastic quality water seals and is safe to use under high pressure diving, or in the shower (which is rare for a watch). The fakes will not hold up to that kind of use.

And this is dangerous exactly how?

It's cheap (thus won't bankrupt you and let your kids starving) and, in the greatest majority of cases, the owner knows it is replica anyway - so it may be less tempted to take a deep dive with it (how many of the replica buyers are deep divers anyway?)

Well, according to Frontline the airlines have been cutting costs on maintenance and there is a serious problem with counterfeit parts. The government seems pretty content NOT to crack down on such things, but to focus instead on making sure that people who pay $1000 for a purse can rest assured that nobody else with a similar-looking purse can get theirs for $25.

As long as the products are advertised as "replicas" there is no harm to the consumer - only to certain executives.

No they're not. The way you do that is by tracking the sales, seizing the goods, and putting the vendors in jail.

What the judge is doing is banning speech. Banning a person who should be tried and (as far as I can tell) found guilty of trafficking in illegal merchandise from speaking. But it's so easy for the government to sit on it's fat ass like Henry VIII, wave a greasy drumstick in the air, and proclaim the Internet Death Sentence. By contrast, having actual law enforcement officers tracking down actual physical crimes, then wading through the slow and expensive process of having a real trial with an actual defendant is just far too much work.

Electronic justice is like clicking through channels on teevee. You can do it while stuffing your face with bon bons. No defendant to object, no defense attorney making arguments about how various things are illegal or unconstitutional. It's so much easier, don't you see? And that's what we want -- easy pseudo-justice that favors big lobbyists. In fact, after polling all the power-brokers in the halls of Congress, a recent study found 100% agreement -- easy pseudo-justice that favors the corrupt is Good For America.

Barring misguided censorship in the name of big media, the United States is still relatively free. We can and seriously should have a frank talk about the nature and extent of filtering in the United States. To suggest that Russia and China are serious alternatives, however, doesn't advance this discourse in any meaningful way.

This is the fundamental problem -- people ought not be allowed to make wide reaching decisions about things that they don't understand. We need to figure out some sort of system by which decision-makers (judges, legislators, etc) must have a working knowledge of what they are talking about. If they can't show that they know what they are talking about, their decision doesn't count. I don't go to my doctor when my transmission is acting up, nor do I ask my mechanic about health issues. It is even more critical that politicians know what they are talking about, as they get to decide what EVERYONE is and is not allowed to do.

I'm reminded of a site I saw a few years ago with a bunch of puzzles, where you had to figure out the URL for the next puzzle by doing things like checking the page source and such. That could actually serve as an interesting basis for a series of tests to see if they understand the internet.

You know how a system is called, who only the ones considered worthy and able on their respective field of knowledge are allowed to make decisions? It's called "rule of the worthy" or in greek: aristokratia.

I once had a Federal judge prohibit me from saying "entered", as in "I entered the name into the database." This was in the early '80s. One would think judges would be a little more computer literate now.

On that note, unless I am mistaken, the "Remove links from all social media sites" actually pointless?

As the domains have been seized, I am assuming that the next time that google (or any other search engine) trawls them, the main content will be gone and they will be reindexed. Give it a month or so and the site will drop off anything relating to the fake rolexes (or whatever it sold) that it was indexed to when it was taken to court?

Actually, I do consider a judge to be "average person", just one who's expertise is in LAW, and not necessarily anything else, especially technology.

That is the problem we have with revering people in black robes over everyday citizens, is they end up being full of themselves and thinking they are better and smarter than "average", when the truth is, they are "average". They should take the time to learn about the consequences of their "legal" opinions before they make their rulings. The consequences of ign

Maybe that's true, but a judge should understand "due process of law" and "right to face your accuser" and "the court's jurisdiction stops at the US border".

By all means, confiscate counterfeit goods if they are found, and stop them from trademark infringement if they are doing that, but you cannot just forget about our hard-won liberties enshrined in the Constitution if you are a judge. Especially if you are a judge.

An injunction requiring Google to "de-list" sites is one remedy which SOPA expressly makes available, and ordering the registry to transfer domain names to GoDaddy and ordering GoDaddy to update the DNS records is in effect achieving another remedy which SOPA creates. The fight against SOPA may be a red herring in some ways, since IP plaintiffs are fashioning very similar remedies in court irrespective of the legislation. Thus, even if SOPA is defeated, it may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory--opponents may win the battle but may not have gained much as a result.

Obviously we need to create a giant P2P/anonymously indexed search engine with this type of shit going on. I honestly expect that various EU countries will be the next to push for SOPA type legislation to keep the commoners in check as the entire EU disintegrates, and the powers that be at the top try to grab more, and bring everyone more fully under their control like greece and italy.

It's not a red herring. Few would dispute that judges already have the powers enumerated in SOPA/PROTECT IP. The problem is that these bills would allow seizure *without* judicial oversight. Merely being accused would be enough.

Yes, the judge in this case was overbroad in his decision, but that doesn't mean it will stand, or that it was a bad decision on the face of it. Although why anyone outside of US jurisdiction would bother to challenge the ruling is another question entirely.

So they are taking the domains and blacklisting them.Good luck for the next guy who buys these domains, what a way to ruin a business, buy a domain that is court ordered not to appear in any social networking or search.

Often, when a court does something like this it's because the real world analogy makes sense, but doesn't translate well into electronic contexts. Here it seems to be the opposite: the meatspace equivalent would be to not only shut down a business that is selling counterfeit goods, but also to order that the business be delisted from the Yellow Pages, at the expense of the phone book publisher. I'm confident that this judge would not have done that, but probably imagined that the company is responsible for its presence in search engine results the way it would be responsible for buying advertising space.

Overreach much? Here we have ICE, Immigration & Customs Enforcement, with their own squads dedicated to protecting intellectual property. I quote this straight from the horses mouth:

WASHINGTON — To mark the official beginning of the online holiday shopping season, known as Cyber Monday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), the Department of Justice and the FBI Washington Field Office have seized 150 website domain names that were illegally selling and distributing counterfeit merchandise.

Not only are there multiple alphabet soups working in collaboration on this, but taxpayer dollars, to use a talking point, tax payer dollars are being used to protect the profits of companies that a) people buying cheap counterfeits don't usually have money to buy the high dollar stuff or choose not to and b) many companies hide their profits overseas to avoid all the tax's imposed on them while simultaneously lobby congress to make import/export easier with the slave friggin labor used to make these fucking pointless articles of consumer whoredom. National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, ie, America production and creation capacity has been reduced to rubbish so we'll sue/block/censor anything that threatens the bank accounts. I'm not a 99%'er and all that jazz; this is a problem between stupid electorate continually rel-electing politicians who do not represent the people and are easily bought out. There are of course many more problems than this, but to boil it down this story is just icing on the turd-cake that will be served to future historians who write about the downfall of America.

Boggles the mind on one hand, on the other hand, well, nothing new under the sun, eh?

They are also being used to protect the people who don't realize that the "Guchi" handbag they are buying isn't a real Gucci. While I would agree that someone who buys a "Guchi" bag probably ought to know better, I'd say that someone who buys a counterfeit "Gucci" has no reason to expect it to be a counterfeit and thus an expectation that they are not being ripped off. Someone who is selling counterfeit goods is banking on the name of the product and not the quality, so while the victim does get something with a "Gucci" label, the quality is not what they paid extra for.

this is a problem between stupid electorate continually rel-electing politicians who do not represent the people and are easily bought out.

I think your view is the one that isn't quite representative of the people. People who don't want to buy, e.g., Gucci, are still free to do so, and nobody is stopping them. Nobody is stopping someone from selling handbags that are quite nice but don't pretend to be Gucci. This is not an issue of stopping someone from selling a bag that looks like a Gucci but is clearly identified as not being one ("counterfeit" is not the same as "knock off".) I think most people are quite happy that someone in charge is trying to get rid of places and people that are selling counterfeit goods, and not just because those counterfeit goods harm the authentic manufacturer. They also harm the consumer, who has spent good money on a poor product, which means they aren't spending that money on anything else.

but to boil it down this story is just icing on the turd-cake that will be served to future historians who write about the downfall of America.

You have it backwards. To do nothing about counterfeit goods is antithetical to what the US is based on. To do nothing is what would help the downfall. "Property rights" is firmly established in US law and history, and is why we prospered as a nation to start with. "Here's a plot of land, homesteader, work hard and it is yours." Contrast that with "here's a community plot of land, occupant. Show up occasionally and you'll get a share of the food it produces."

"Pretend your product is made by someone else who has built a reputation for quality and profit at the expense of them and the consumer" is more like the latter than the former. I have no problem with the legal system going after counterfeiters. None at all. They have no right to use the trademarks and names of reputable companies. When I go into a restaurant and buy a "Coke", I expect that it will BE a product of the Coca Cola company, not "Bob's Coke" or even "Coak". That position doesn't have anything to do with IP or patents or copyrights, just with fraud.

sad part is that he will throw a hissy fit that everyone n the planet does not obey him, and he will not bother to get an education to make sure he does not sound like a complete tool again in the future.

(A recent November 14 order went after an additional 228 sites; none had a chance to contest the request until after it was approved and the names had been seized.)

How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit. The other 225 sites were seized based on a Chanel anti-counterfeiting specialist browsing the Web.

Does the court really have the authority to force "all Internet search engines" and "all social media websites" to remove these domain names from their respective websites? It seems like too broad a target for an injunction, but perhaps I'm mistaken?

Does the court really have the authority to force "all Internet search engines" and "all social media websites" to remove these domain names from their respective websites? It seems like too broad a target for an injunction, but perhaps I'm mistaken?

Just to clarify, I am assuming such orders would not apply to companies outside the US. The question is whether or not the court has the authority to force all US-based search engines and all US-based social media websites to block the domains in question. That

The summary and a number of the comments may be going a wee bit overboard while lambasting the order of the court. Any court has a certain jurisdiction, dependent on the constitutions, legislative acts, treaties, and case law within that jurisdiction. How a NY state judge rules doesn't matter to me in HI unless I enter or transact business with NY. This is understood by the NY judge, and is assumed when writing the decision.

Likewise, I could sell material for the NSDAP on-line, and if a German federal judge

What power does a judge have to order a company to modify it's database? Unless that company is named as part of a lawsuit and loses the suit, what power does the judge have to compel any 3rd-party to do anything? Am I compelled by this ruling to delete any bookmarks I have? What if I run my own search engine?what